Afterlife
by Rei Ryuugazaki
Summary: Clay and Desmond meet up in the afterlife and have a chat about what led them to where they are now.


Ryuugazaki: I don't own Assassin's Creed or Avenged Sevenfold. (sobs)

* * *

 _I see a distant light, but girl this can't be right.  
_ _Such a surreal place to see so how did this come to be,  
_ _Arrived too early._

 _And when I think of all the places I just don't belong,  
_ _I've come to grips with life and realize this is going too far.  
_ _I don't belong here, we gotta move on dear, escape from this afterlife.  
_ _'Cause this time I'm right to move on and on, far away from here._

* * *

It was a sunny day with a gentle breeze at 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The blonde haired man at 6' sat on the sand of the beach, looking at the ebb and flow of the waves. Behind him was a peak. From time to time, when he was laying on the sand, he would calculate the slope of the peak, but then he would give up. He loved doing math and he loved calculations, but his eleventh-grade trigonometry teacher absolutely killed him when it came to slope.

In the distance was a tanned man about 5'10'' who was wearing a black hoodie and acid washed denims. He was walking towards the blonde, and he had his hands in his pocket. He didn't stand very straight, and the blonde wondered about it. The tanned man eventually reached the blonde who was enraptured with the ebb and flow of the tides of the island. He had been stuck here for so long, he began to find solace in the water.

"Clay." The man touched his shoulder and Clay grabbed his wrist. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, Desmond." Desmond ran his hand through his short, black hair and shifted. "How are you today?" Desmond shrugged and took off his hoodie. He was wearing a white shirt with an eagle on it. They sat together in silence, looking at the ebb and flow of the water. "Desmond, why did you choose to die?"

It struck Desmond by surprise that Clay would ask that. Clay is a very tactful person. Where did this come from?

"I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It was either die and let the world be saved or live and try to rebuild only for the cycle to continue." Desmond hoped that his answer would satisfy Clay. Clay could be very particular. "Clay, if I chose to live, would there be another Altair? Would it be an infinite loop? Would it be like incarnation?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Desmond," Clay chuckled at the thought. Then he fell silent. Even he didn't know that and he's been trapped in the machine.

"What about you, Clay? Why did you choose to die?"

"I had a role to play. We both did." Clay laid down on the sand and made a sand angel. "My role was to uncover what needed to be found and to give you the information. I did what I had to do and it required me to die."

"You didn't have to die."

"Nor did you, but we did it for the same reason. We wanted to be a hindrance to the Templars." Clay sighed and exhaled. "We had different methods, though. I chose to find what was needed and then took the information with me. You... You did whatever the hell that was." Clay laughed. Desmond kicked sand onto his chest. "Did you love Lucy, Desmond?" Another direct question that took Desmond by surprise.

"I might have."

"She was my team-mate, my left lung. Then she became a Templar." Desmond joined Clay on the sand. "Do you know why I wasn't released? It was because she knew I would tell Mr Miles." Desmond cringed at that. He had never heard anyone call his father 'Mr Miles' a day in his life. "Your father was a good man, Desmond. He was everything I wanted in a father."

"What was yours like?"

"Why did you run away from your parents?" Clay asked. "Your mother was the sweetest person I've ever met. Why did you leave her?" Clay dusted some of the sand off. "How could you leave someone who loved you so dearly?" Clay closed his eyes and thought of Anna Miles. She had curly, black hair, piercing blue eyes, and she was the colour of amber. She spoke with a slight accent and she was about 5'6'', but she was fierce and she loved her son.

"Are you upset about that?"

"Yes. Your mother is a great woman. She loved you dearly. How could you leave her?"

"My father..." Desmond rolled on his left side, away from Clay. "He used to beat me mercilessly. Mom tried to make it better, but it still happened. I loved Mom, but I had to leave."

"You could've called her, at least." Clay sighed. "When she first saw me, she cradled my head and wept. Apparently Mr Miles told her that I reminded her of you."

"But what was your father like?"

"Dad? Well, Dad was into engineering. He was really pushy about me going into the family business. I wanted to be many things - an astronaut, a dentist - but I decided on computer engineering. Then he got upset about me not getting into a top school." Clay kicked off of his worn down trainers. "After a session with my psychiatrist, I met your father. I had just been diagnosed with HFA and ADHD and I was reading over the paper they gave me. He struck a conversation with me and we started to converse about things. Eventually, he told me about the Brotherhood and invited me to join. I jumped at it, I was inducted, and this was in 2010."

"Why did you do it?"

"I felt that it would give me purpose."

"You needed purpose?"

"Of course." Clay licked his lips. "Do you regret doing what you did, Desmond?" Desmond thought back on him running away from home, making it to New York, receiving his GED, becoming a bartender, and him returning to his guild.

"No. I'm grateful." Desmond sat up and scratched his stomach. "Do you?"

"Not one bit, brother." Clay smiled and patted his close friend and younger brother's shoulder.


End file.
